Boucher’s Eye Injury Was a Scary Sight

The last time we saw defenseman Philippe Boucher, April 25, he was being helped off the Pepsi Center ice after getting hit in his right eye by a puck in Game 5 of the Kings’ first-round series against Colorado.

How Boucher got hurt was bad luck. Over the first four games of the series, Boucher was a force on the King blue line, giving as much as he took against Peter Forsberg and company. With 4:41 left in the first period of Game 5, a shot by Avalanche defenseman Darius Kasparaitis caromed off a group of players and struck Boucher in the face.

It was the type of injury that was as bad as it looked and Boucher knows that if the puck had hit his eye a little cleaner, his hockey career would be over.

“I have pretty big cheekbones and that took a little bit of the impact away,” said Boucher, who had surgery to repair a detached retina earlier this month and has only recently begun to get around on his own again. “It easily could have took my entire eye out.”

Nearly a month after suffering his injury, Boucher still experiences pain whenever he closes his eyes.

“It’s one of those things that you’ll always remember,” he said. “Although I knew that I probably had a concussion, I was conscious the whole time. Everything slowed down from the moment the puck hit the guy in front of the net. I saw the puck coming right at me but I had nowhere to go. There was nothing I could do.”

It was the second time this season that Boucher was hit in the face by a puck. But the first time, he only suffered a broken nose. The second time, Boucher immediately knew the injury was serious.

“This one hit me so hard, all I could do was go down to the ice and I knew there was no way I could have gotten up,” he said. “You knew it was bad right away when you try to see and you can’t. It’s easy to panic.

“Thinking that my career was over came through my mind. When I was down on the ice and couldn’t see, all kinds of thoughts took over.”

If his career was over, Boucher, 29, knew the timing could not have been worse. After struggling to find his spot as an NHL regular in his first nine seasons in the league, he finally had stopped spending time in the minors last season. Since then, he has developed into a steady two-way defenseman who led the Kings in shots on goal during the regular season and finished with career-highs in assists, 23, and points, 30.

This summer, Boucher will be an unrestricted free agent in a market with opportunities for his kind of player. It seems as if every team needs a defenseman like Boucher and last summer, players with similar capabilities, such as Jon Klemm and Jason York, signed big-time free-agent contracts.

Two things helped ease Boucher’s mind after he was injured.

King doctors told him that with surgery, he had a 95% chance of full recovery and that with a follow-up operation the chance rose to 100%.

Then too, Boucher had bought an insurance policy before the start of this season. Although he had to pay a high premium because of his history of concussions, Boucher bought the policy, thinking of his wife, Lucy and son, Matthew.

For the first week after the injury, Boucher seemed to be recovering well. But when he went for one final checkup before being released from the hospital, he suffered a setback.

“After the blood on the retina drained, they noticed that I had a tear on it,” he said. “I thought that I was about to go home but instead, I ended up having emergency surgery the next day.”

Boucher hopes to be able to start training again in July. By that time, he hopes to have heard something from the Kings about his contract. But he’ll also be ready to test free agency after working so hard to get to this point of his career.

“I know it’s going to be a slow process, with my recovery and [deciding his NHL future], but I’m excited about this summer,” he said. “It’s been a long road and I know this is a time that I may be able to get a good contract and be able to take care of my family.”

Once a Whaler and Now a Hurricane

In November 1971, Howard Baldwin and a couple of his business friends were awarded a World Hockey Assn. franchise, the Hartford Whalers.

For 17 years, Baldwin was the main man behind the Whalers. He watched them gain world attention when they signed Gordie Howe and his sons, Mark and Marty, in 1977 and then join the NHL in 1979. Baldwin also watched the Whalers grow into one of the league’s most stable franchises until his group sold the team in 1988.

Since then, Baldwin has moved full time to Southern California and now heads Crusader Entertainment, a film production company that has as a financial resource, King owner Philip Anschutz’s Denver-based Anschutz Corp. But that has not stopped Baldwin from following the Whalers, who became the Carolina Hurricanes in 1997 under the ownership of Peter Karmanos, Jim Rutherford and Thomas Thewes.

“I follow it really closely because, I guess, you can say that I founded the franchise,” Baldwin said of the team, tied with Toronto, 1-1, in the Eastern Conference finals. “I just discovered it in a different market. My last year with the franchise was 1988 but you still can’t help but keep track of what’s going on.”

Baldwin said his best move with the Whalers was drafting Ron Francis in 1981. Francis, in his second stint with the franchise, was an All-Star center for the Hurricanes at 39 this season.

But even if the Hurricanes go on to win the Stanley Cup, Baldwin isn’t ready to get back into owning an NHL team. Crusader Entertainment, which produced the hockey-themed movie, “Mystery, Alaska,” is doing well with three features being released this year and six more in 2003.

“I really don’t miss it because I’m plenty busy doing what I’m doing now with the film company,” Baldwin said. “I started the Whalers and it was seven years of extraordinary ups and downs.... But in hindsight ... it was probably way easier to manage the team back then than how teams have it today.

“It has become a business where, unless you are extremely wealthy, it’s become a very tough business to succeed in.”